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Monday, November 7, 2016

NO To NEW TRIDENT Campaign Coordinator Leonard Eiger was recently interviewed by Ginny Wolff onSpeak Up, Speak Out! on KSVR – FM about the work of Ground Zero Center for Non-Violent Action since 1977 to protest the Trident submarines (and their nuclear weapons) based at the Bangor Naval Base in Silverdale, Washington.

They discussed the history of Ground Zero, the bigger picture of U.S. foreign policy regarding the use of nuclear weapons, ongoing international tension, and the agreement between Congress and the Obama administration to spend a trillion dollars over 30 years to rebuild the entire U.S. arsenal of nuclear weapons.

Sunday, July 17, 2016

On July 16, 1945 the first experimental atomic bomb was exploded at the site known as Trinity at Alamogordo, New Mexico in the desert called Jornada del Muerto (Journey of Death) . It marked the beginning of a journey toward what could someday be the ultimate manifestation of death.

The rest is history (and some of it particularly horrific history); and that history is still being written each day as many nations (led by the model of the United States) continue to rely on nuclear weapons while others seek to develop them. Then there are those nations (most of the non-nuclear weapons nations) that are rightly calling for an end to this madness.

The United Sates should be leading the world toward disarmament and abolition, but instead we continue to utilize the archaic and flawed rhetoric of "strategic nuclear deterrence" and "national security," and have found a host of new enemies since losing the original justifications for our Cold War enemy the Soviet Union. That being said, we are, in fact, re-igniting that Cold War relationship (now with Russia) so many years later. As a result we are re-building the infrastructure that made Trinity - and over the years tens of thousands of nuclear weapons and the systems designed to deliver them to their targets - possible.

Billions have been, and continue to be, spent on the US nuclear weapons complex. These huge investments represent, according to the National Nuclear Security Administration, the resources necessary to "to transform a Cold War nuclear weapons complex into a 21st Century nuclear security enterprise." There seems to be no end in sight!

With 24 Trident missiles, each missile carrying up to 8 independently targetable nuclear warheads, and each warhead having an explosive yield of as much as 475 kilotons, just one Trident submarine is capable of incinerating much of any continent and rendering the land uninhabitable for anyone unfortunate to survive the initial blast, heat and radiation effects. The U.S. has 14 Trident subs outfitted for the Trident II D5 missile. Research has concluded that even a small scale, regional nuclear war would result in a nuclear famine of massive proportions.

Advocates of US nuclear modernization point to Russia's and China's modernization efforts to justify the need for new and improved US nuclear weapon systems. In reality, the US has led Russia and China into what is rapidly becoming a new nuclear arms race. As for ballistic missile submarines, the Russian program languished for years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and. Since then the US has added a newer and more capable missile (the Trident II D5), introduced an improved version of the W76 (100 kiloton) warhead, and increased Trident's presence in the Pacific (roughly 60 percent of all Trident patrols are in the Pacific).

All of this, 71 years after the sun rose twice over the New Mexico desert, is moving humanity closer, once again, toward the brink. Rather than lead the way toward a nuclear weapons-free world, President Obama has been leading what will become (should subsequent presidents continue to fund it) "the biggest U.S. buildup of nuclear arms since Ronald Reagan left the White House." Although word is out in just the past week that President Obama may take steps in his final days in The White House to implement nuclear policy changes, this still remains to be seen.

It is no understatement to say that the fate of humanity rests in the hands of the nuclear-armed nations, particularly the US and Russia. Should the Presidents of the two largest nuclear-armed begin to show the other nations a path toward abolition, we can begin to move further back from the brink. And then we can begin to have the serious conversation about scrapping Trident (and all nuclear weapons) and ensuring that the sun will never again rise twice some day.

Sunday, April 24, 2016

Editor's Note: Here is a wonderful Earth Day perspective on nuclear weapons, with a focus on Trident, written by Linda Pentz Gunter. As Linda says, "Threatening to fire off nuclear missiles to deter a nuclear attack is about as psychopathic as you can get." What might be even more psychopathic is that Trident is not only a second-strike weapon system, but also (by its very design) a first-strike weapon system as well.

Linda is the international specialist at Beyond Nuclear. "Beyond Nuclear aims to educate and activate the public about the connections between nuclear power and nuclear weapons and the need to abandon both to safeguard our future. Beyond Nuclear advocates for an energy future that is sustainable, benign and democratic. The Beyond Nuclear team works with diverse partners and allies to provide the public, government officials, and the media with the critical information necessary to move humanity toward a world beyond nuclear (from the Beyond Nuclear website)."

Why do we humans resort to shooting, whenever a challenging problem confronts us? Whether it's culling badgers to protect hedgehogs, or renewing the Trident missile threat with expensive upgrades, our species seems determined to upset the balance of nature and harmony on Earth by shooting first - and never asking the questions at all.

Threatening to fire off nuclear missiles to deter a nuclear attack is plain psychopathic. Shooting badgers to preserve hedgehogs is just poor science. But either way, if we really want to 'protect and survive', we need to stop all the shooting.

I was recently reminded that hedgehogs climb trees. They do this, apparently, to take naps in presumably vacant birds' nests.

Having been raised on a steady diet of hedgehogs as milkmen (Little Grey Rabbit) or laundresses (Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle,) this tidbit had escaped my memory. I found it when revisiting an old book from childhood: Oddities of Animal Life.

Badgers, meanwhile, are early pioneers of OCD, so obsessive are they about hygiene.

They change their bedding so often, piling the old material outside the set that, according to Oddities, "by the end of the summer, so much old bedding has been turned out that the pile outside the front door will have grown into a huge mound." But they also like to eat hedgehogs.

So Fuzzypeg must be pitted against Brock. Badgers, those connoisseurs of cleanliness, have already been punished as the filthy purveyors of disease in cattle. With hedgehog numbers dwindling, the urchin gourmands must pay again with their lives. The solution to saving hedgehogs is to shoot badgers.

None of this is particularly surprising. For while Nature seems to stay in balance quite nicely thank you - allowing badgers their fair share of hedgehogs to no ill effect - it is disrupted only when humans interfere. And the human answer, from time immemorial, to any problem you can't solve is to shoot it.

When 'controlling' the sick will mean shooting them

In 1980, an article was published in The Guardian, written by Dr. John Gleisner, a founder of the Medical Campaign Against Nuclear Weapons. The headline read ominously: "When 'controlling' the sick will mean shooting them."

Gleisner had attended a civil defence glee fest about the 'survivability' of nuclear war, held at Imperial College. There, Gleisner reported, the audience of medical professionals was told that the banned BBC film, The War Game, was "a nonsense which we should get out of our minds."

But then things got sinister. There was, Gleisner wrote, an "underlying theme which stressed the need for pretraining in order to get 'hardened.'" Obviously there would be many sick and injured people after a nuclear attack whom the diminished numbers of medical personnel would not be able to treat. They would need to toughen up.

"Home OffIce speakers made it clear that these people will be 'controlled,' and that training programmes in 'local control' are to be stepped up", Gleisner wrote. "They did not enlarge on 'control', but, like looters, it seems that they must be shot."

Gleisner, a psychiatrist, was well positioned to recognize madness

Gleisner, a psychiatrist from Manchester, was well positioned to recognize madness when he saw it. And the Civil Defence program in Britain was most certainly mad, with the Home Office's infamous booklet, Protect and Survive, its ultimate insanity.

Civil Defence briefings to county councillors included such insights as: "Animals which had died from radiation poisoning would be edible if they were bled first." For desperate survivors of a nuclear holocaust, this presumably would have included badgers and hedgehogs.

Cruise Missiles were even madder, taking the concept of shooting' to its ultimate obscenity. It was Gleisner again, along with his wife who, in 1980, mortgaged their house to fund the booking of a train from Manchester to London to bring people to the first big demonstration against Cruise missiles.

Shooting off Cruise Missiles naturally led to more shooting - the shooting down of nuclear missiles. Or at least the belief that we could shoot down - or intercept - nuclear weapons headed our way.

This nuclear ping pong was made popular by US President Reagan and his silly Star Wars program, more properly known as the Strategic Defense Initiative. It still goes on today, largely between US based submarines and Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, the site of 67 US atomic tests during the Cold War.

The Kwajalein base is appropriately named the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Test Site. (Ironically, Kwajalein is now home to the atomic refugees from Bikini and Rongelap atolls.)

Which brings us to Trident. As recently as last November, the US fired two consecutive unarmed Trident II (D5) missiles at Kwajalein. A military spokesperson told the LA Times that Trident II "is a centerpiece of the US military's ability to deter a nuclear attack, and an ongoing effort to modernize the weapon is a top priority."

And yet just this month, we have President Obama, at the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, DC, restating his conviction that "the entire premise of American foreign policy as it relates to nuclear weapons for the last 70 years has been focused on preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons." Except, perhaps, in the United States.

The US Navy is planning to replace its Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines, and is seeking $773.1 million in advance procurement funding and $1,091.1 million in research and development funding for that purpose. This would pay for 14 new submarines, each of which would carry 24 Trident II missiles, according to a report prepared for Congress by the Congressional Research Service.

Each of those Trident missiles would in turn carry eight warheads with yields as high as 36 Hiroshima bombs. The US Navy considers these nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines to represent "a survivable system for carrying out a retaliatory nuclear attack", the CRS report noted.

And so the insanity continues: this idea that we can fight, win and survive a nuclear war. As Gleisner wrote, in such an environment, "'survival of the fittest' becomes 'survival of the most psychopathic.'"

Threatening to fire off nuclear missiles to deter a nuclear attack is about as psychopathic as you can get. Shooting badgers to preserve hedgehogs is just poor science. But either way, if we really want to 'protect and survive', we need to stop all the shooting.

Only then, when we agree there is room for us all, can we start to restore true balance and harmony on Planet Earth.

Tuesday, March 22, 2016

*Editor's Note: Paul Ingram, Executive Director, British American Security Information Council (BASIC), wrote this article about potential threats to the UK's Trident nuclear weapons system. The questions and concerns raised by Ingram also apply to the US OHIO Class (Trident) nuclear weapons system, and we should be paying close attention to the reports and briefings being issued by BASIC.

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A debate is now raging over BASIC's exposure of the threat emerging technologies present to the future viability of Trident submarines. The Ministry of Defence (MoD) states they do not believe it is a problem, and that even if it were submarines would still be the best, most stealthy platform for nuclear missiles. The confidence implied in the MoD's public line is unjustified, and must surely cover up a deep concern held by strategists for the future viability of its most expensive weapon system. For if submarines are easily detectable, then they are the very last place the UK should choose to put its nuclear deterrent.

In response to BASIC's questions over the future viability of a nuclear deterrent based upon Trident submarines, MoD's latest factsheet (published 26 February) states:

We believe it is unlikely there will be any radical technological breakthrough which might diminish the current advantages of the submarine over potential anti-submarine systems. In any event, we judge that a submarine will remain by far the least vulnerable of all the platform options.

In a Parliamentary Answer on 7 March, Philip Dunne assures the House, 'We are confident that our submarine fleet remains safe and secure,' after explaining that MoD tracks these technologies.

To state that there is no problem is heroic, in the face of the evidence. Echoing what former Defence Secretary Des Browne has said, the principal justification for renewing the Trident system is the future uncertainty of the strategic environment, yet we are being asked to believe there is a strong certainty that our systems will not be transparent and vulnerable throughout its operational life, up to half a century from now.

BASIC's latest briefing last week by David Hambling, illustrates how developing sensors operating with extraordinary computing capabilities, based upon a large number of relatively cheap drones operating in a massive network could take away the stealth of submarines before the Successor class launches in 20 years' time. It is often claimed that it is as difficult to find a submarine in the sea as it is a needle in a haystack. Both are achievable with the right equipment. A needle can be extracted with a very powerful magnet.

The ocean is, of course, massive, but efforts to detect submarines have until now depended upon a small number of sensors based upon large platforms (aircraft, frigates, hunter-killer submarines) patrolling over huge distances. We stand on the advent of a new era where more effective and far smaller sensors can be based on a very large number of automated platforms in or over the sea in constant real-time communication with each other.

Contrary to the image invoked by MoD, we are not talking about some unpredictable, surprise breakthrough. The development of drone technology has accelerated in recent years, so that drones exist today that can travel for many months without refuelling, that can hunt submarines under the surface using a variety of sensors at some range (thousands of metres), and that can communicate with each other. They cannot and will not for the foreseeable future travel at the speed of a nuclear submarine, but that is unnecessary as these drones operate as a pack. The technology needs to mature. The cost needs to come down somewhat. But both these are foreseeable in the next two decades.

Some have responded that in these games of cat and mouse, submarine contractors will simply improve their countermeasures or tactics. But this underestimates the nature of the impact from these developments that effectively bring a hitherto inconceivable level of transparency to the oceans in a relatively short time. Submarines inevitably leave a variety of signatures, and cannot be covered up with the addition of more efficient acoustic tiles, or even some theoretical acoustic cloaking device.

The consequence of this to the manned submarine is far bigger than implied in the second sentence of the MoD factsheet, claiming that even with ocean transparency, submarines would remain the least vulnerable platforms. The submarine's advantage over other platforms is its stealth and the fact that it moves. Take away its stealth and its vulnerabilities become very significant - indeed, the submarine becomes one of the most vulnerable of all options.

Submarines are generally slower than surface ships, and once located and tracked, they are highly vulnerable to attack by missiles capable of hitting targets underwater, or the fast-moving air-launched drone torpedoes under development. An adversary could track the submarine throughout its patrol and hold it at risk, and take it out at the most convenient or critical moment. The UK nuclear posture is based upon a single submarine on patrol, though one can assume that there would be two out in times of crisis. If an adversary were capable of holding those British patrolling submarines at risk, there would be a major incentive to take them out pre-emptively, before the submarine commander would consider launching its nuclear-tipped missiles. In this environment, submarine-based missiles lose their critical stabilising second-strike ability, and contribute to deeply dangerous crisis instability in a similar manner to land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that need to be launched on warning in a use-them-or-lose-them posture. Perhaps it's worse...

Attacking ICBMs or aircraft based on the homeland currently involves massive missile or aircraft strikes, involving explicit attacks on the target country that would invite a proportional response on the state perpetrating the attack. An attack on a submarine in international waters would neutralise it and kill a hundred combatants: an act of war, but would it merit a disproportionate nuclear response against cities? In any case the UK would require an ally to launch such a nuclear response on its behalf because its own capability would be lost, unless there were a second submarine on patrol. A second submarine could be held at risk in the same manner as the first.

What about alternatives? Of course they all have their drawbacks. Surface ships are just as vulnerable as submarines. Land-based ballistic missiles have no stealth at all and also require a launch-on-warning posture in crisis situations. Aircraft are also vulnerable to first strikes and need to be rapidly scrambled into the air if there is a warning of in-coming missiles. They can also be shot down en route to their targets. But where these systems have significant advantage over submarines is in the possibility of spreading the assets over several sites, requiring multiple hits. If the systems are dual-capable there is greater chance of investing in sufficient numbers of aircraft and deploying them in a coordinated attack that nuclear deterrence would be achieved at far lower cost. Or it may be time to consider leaving the nuclear game, acknowledging that Britain does need an independent capability, and instead invest in other capabilities that genuinely contribute to European stability.

Until recently opinions on the debate over Trident renewal was largely determined by security, moral, diplomatic or economic concerns. The viability of the systems involved was taken for granted. But this is no longer a responsible response to the emerging evidence that submarines may not only be the most expensive and sophisticated platforms for nuclear delivery systems, they may become the most vulnerable. Reassurances without evidence from institutions or politicians heavily committed to the renewal project hold little credibility in the face of clear and emerging technologies that could not only undermine the advantage of the submarine, but leave us with an expensive and destabilising system. We need to reopen the Trident Alternatives Review and do a better job this time.

Paul Ingram, Executive Directorof the British American Security Information Council has been with BASIC since 2002 and been executive director since 2007. Paul has authored a number of BASIC's reports and briefings covering a variety of nuclear and non-nuclear issues.

Sunday, January 31, 2016

Editor’s Note: Dr. David Hall is a longtime, active member of Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action. Ground Zero has resisted the Trident nuclear weapon system for near 40 years. Hall has been a constant voice for abolishing Trident over the years, and continues to speak out against the government’s plans to build a new generation of ballistic missile submarines to replace the current Trident fleet. This guest commentary was first published in Saturday's Everett Herald newspaper.

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Three minutes to midnight no time to rebuild Trident missiles

Guest commentary in The Herald of Everett, Washington, January 30, 2016, By David C. Hall

A year ago the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved its Doomsday Clock to 3 minutes to midnight, responding to “entirely insufficient” global efforts to check nuclear weaponry and global warming or to address the risks inherent to both. “Midnight” means the end of 2.4 million years of human civilization. This week the organization kept the clock at 3 minutes to midnight, sending “an expression of dismay that world leaders continue to fail to focus their efforts and the world's attention on reducing the extreme danger posed by nuclear weapons and climate change.”

I am a psychiatrist who has served severely stressed children and families for decades while haunted by what I learned as an intern about the horrors of atomic bombs on Japan. Everything I work for and my father, uncles and grandfathers served for in the World Wars goes for nothing if we ever allow nuclear weapons to be used again. This is especially true now that these weapons are seven to 30 times more powerful, nuclear nations keep their launchers on hair-trigger alert, and the climatological threshold for nuclear famine is in the hundreds of nuclear weapons.

Dr. David Hall

There are still 15,000 weapons in nine arsenals. Global warming left unchecked will desicate some of us and drown others, making millions of refugees. Nuclear war could incinerate millions in a flash and starve out billions by blocking out the sun. The scientists with BAS are asking us to squarely face these potentialities.

Current modernization plans for U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons come at a time when Russia is economically strapped while facing pressure on its western border, like the pressures America faced during the Cuban Missile Crisis with Soviet nuclear weapons 90 miles away.

Planned for 2020 are twenty U.S. B61-12 nuclear dial-a-bombs ( delivering 0.3 to 340 kilotons of destruction) for deployment on German fighter bombers, and Russian nuclear-armed drone submarines capable of traveling 6,200 miles underwater to evade U.S. missile defenses.

Most troubling to me locally is “modernization” (rebuilding) of the Trident nuclear submarine fleet that is based on Hood Canal. What's missing in the current conversation? Each Trident warship is designed with the capacity to end civilized life on Earth. Each of the 12 new Tridents now planned for replacing the current fleet will be built to launch within minutes on presidential command 128 hydrogen bombs carried in packs of eight on 16 missiles with a 7,000 mile-range and pinpoint accuracy.

The W-76 warhead is built to explode with 100,000 tons of dynamite equivalent (100 kilotons); the W-88 warhead, 455,000 tons (455 kilotons). The Hiroshima atomic bomb that killed outright about 100,000 human beings exploded with about 12 kilotons. That was an ugly time that we as a human community have fortunately managed to grow beyond. We no longer have Hitler, Hirohito, Stalin or Mao Tse-tung. Germany, Japan, Russia and China are vastly different countries. Germany and Japan are allies. Russia fought al Qaida with us in Afghanistan and is fighting ISIS. China is a major tradingpartner.

U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Washington, holds a key vote on rebuilding Trident and has yet to speak out. He's hearing “deterrence” from military contractors and military advisers who fail to tally U.S. provocations, but reap contracts returning 1,000 to 1 on their political investments.

Our adversaries see us with ever expanding conventional and nuclear military capabilities. Nuclear weapons help them, not us, level the military playing field. America is fueling a new nuclear arms race. Trident warships are first-strike weapons of mass murder. Horrible idea, immoral jobs. We can (and must) do better. Mr. Larsen?

David C. Hall, M.D., lives on Lopez Island and works in Anacortes. Past president of Physicians for Social Responsibility, he currently leads the state chapter's nuclear abolition task force.

Source URL (originally published in The Everett Herald): http://www.heraldnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20160130/OPINION03/160139979&template=PrinterFriendly

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For over 37 years Ground Zero has resisted the Trident nuclear weapons system, and now we are working to prevent another generation of Trident from threatening humanity with the threat of nuclear annihilation.

We are working to stop production of the US Navy's next generation ballistic missile submarine. The SSBN(X), as it is called by the Navy, will cost nearly $100 billion just to build 12 submarines. Built to replace the existing Trident fleet, this new sub will continue to hold the world under the threat of massive nuclear war to nearly the end of this century.

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About Me

I am a student and practitioner of nonviolence, working for the abolition of ALL nuclear weapons. I coordinate media & outreach for Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action (www.gzcenter.org), and also coordinate the Puget Sound Nuclear Weapon Free Zone (psnukefree.org) and the NO To NEW TRIDENT Campaign.